Integrated review

Things got a little heated in the House of Commons last night after defence secretary Ben Wallace gave short shrift to fellow Tory MP and ex Royal Anglian Regiment reservist Lieutenant Mark Francois. All hell broke loose after a war of words over the Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget blackhole. Scot’s Guard’s own Captain Wallace pointed out that criticism lobbed from the backbenches about defence procurement would carry a little more weight if the honourable critics had themselves not been former defence ministers overseeing the deficit of which they complained. Lieutenant Francois was particularly aggrieved, demanding corrections to the record and apologies galore. Those Stakhanovite scribes of Hansard have diplomatically recorded

The government’s integrated review of foreign and security policy, published yesterday, has landed surprisingly well considering that much of the Whitehall blob has been so dismissive of Boris Johnson’s concept of Global Britain. A few longstanding critics have been snippy about the new document. But no one can disagree that the review offers a genuine strategy. In recent years, one of the most persistent ideas about the UK’s future on the world stage has been that we cannot make a go of things post-Brexit. Such ideas, so the counter-argument goes, are based on the deluded nostalgia of a ‘buccaneering’ nation, foolishly going it alone on trade and much else besides.

Boris Johnson still has a journalist’s ear for snappy phrases — levelling up, an oven-ready Brexit, Global Britain. The PM attempted to flesh out one of those headlines on Tuesday with his integrated review — so called because it ties together foreign and defence policy alongside trade and international aid.  The 100-page document — designed to set the course for ‘Global Britain’ over the next ten years — identifies Russia and China as the UK’s two biggest international challenges. The former is described as an ‘active threat’, a dangerous rogue state, while the East Asian country is seen instead as a ‘systemic challenge’. The position is clear: China is the